What Britain needs is hope... and clarity

I think one knows what the British people would like to hear. They want someone, by whom they mean David Cameron, to tell them in simple terms what needs to be done. Even if his ABC of policy contained issues which they found uncomfortable, they would respond with a feeling of relief.

They would then be able to close off the Election equation. They know that it is time for a change away from Labour; they have not yet decided whether it is also time for a change to the Tories. In the meantime, the Conservatives are not yet sure of an overall majority.

No doubt the argument will centre on the economic issues in the General Election debates, but there is a military issue which ought to be taken first. The conflict in Afghanistan is costing an increasing number of lives, recently running at about one death a day. For the past five years the generals and the Press have been calling for the troops to have better protection, better armoured vehicles and more helicopters. Only now are they being supplied.

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Rees-Mogg cartoon

The Prime Minister has announced an extra £100million to replace the snatch vehicles which have proved such death traps for British soldiers. These vehicles were being used to patrol Belfast in the Eighties. They did not make sense in Basra; they do not make sense in Afghanistan. It seems cynical that the troops had to wait until there was an Election only two months away: £100million makes a nice Election headline.

At least the funding issue has been raised. The Prime Minister has appeared before the Chilcot Committee to answer questions on the financing of the Iraq War. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer when that was started; he is now Prime Minister and the war in Afghanistan continues. In his appearance before Chilcot, he insisted he had never refused a defence request for funding. If that were true, then the generals would only have had to ask for the money for helicopters on the US scale, and they would have been given it. That is not what the generals say.

Nor is it what Sir Bill Jeffrey, the Permanent Secretary to the Minister of Defence, told the Chilcot Committee in his evidence. He told the inquiry that the MoD budget had been 'more than quite tight' in recent years. The increases in defence spending had not been enough to fight two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan: 'The real problem that persists to this day is that, despite these increases, the defence budget has been stretched.'

Sir Kevin Tebbit, who was Sir Bill Jeffrey's predecessor at the Ministry of Defence, said Gordon Brown had 'guillotined' defence spending in his time and had left the MoD operating with a 'crisis budget'.

The first commitment of an incoming Government should therefore be to match the expenditure on British forces with the tasks they are asked to take on. There is no failure of Government more discreditable than the attempt to fight a war on the cheap. The consequences of such a policy are that money is saved, but lives are lost.

Gordon Brown has controlled public expenditure while soldiers have been dying in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the shortage of helicopters and adequately armoured vehicles. Tony Blair no doubt shares the responsibility, but the main decisions on finance have been made by Gordon Brown, either as Chancellor or as Prime Minister.

No doubt these decisions were made for economic reasons, and no one wants a spendthrift Chancellor. But Brown supported these two wars; he did not support the troops.

Meanwhile, the latest financial news does not support Labour's claims that the British economy is making a healthy and sustained recovery. In January, the trade deficit jumped to £3.8billion, compared with £2.6 billion the month before. This undermines the Government's policy. The authorities expected that the fall in the pound relative to other currencies would lead to a sharp increase in exports, and that Britain would have an export-led recovery; that has not yet happened.

The pound has indeed fallen, by 28 per cent against other currencies since the start of the financial crisis, but export values actually fell by

eight per cent in January, the worst monthly drop since 2002. In part, the British Chambers of Commerce blame the fall in exports on Government policy, or lack of policy.

There is increasing anxiety about the decline in the British economy, the threat to Britain's Triple A credit rating and the possibility that Britain will relapse into a double-dip recession. The City of London is the main source of Britain's financial services income, but morale there has been undermined by the apparently hostile attitude of the Government.

No doubt, the Prime Minister should have called an earlier General Election. Indeed, he should have called one on the day Tony Blair handed over the keys of Downing Street. One of the failures of the Brown administration has been the Prime Minister's personal inability to create confidence.

That makes it all the more important that David Cameron should present a simple and frank account of Conservative policy, showing how he will win and what he will do. I have no doubt the country wants to see the back of Gordon Brown, but there still remains doubt about the Conservative alternative. Nevertheless, the Conservatives are the party of hope, while Labour is close to being the party of despair.